Inside the University of Virginia's Athletics Video Services Department

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Inside the University of Virginia's Athletics Video Services Department

11/21/2007

By Kevin Schmitt

The 2007 college football season is winding down, and while the last of the autumn leaves falls lazily from the trees in Charlottesville, VA, there's no slowdown for Erik Elvgren, senior producer and animator at the University of Virginia's Athletics Video Services Department (AVS). The last home UVA football game is only days away, and while Elvgren's animated CavMan adventures make their final 2007 showing at Scott Stadium, basketball season is already heating up, and CavMan is expected to pull duty for the Cavalier basketball team as well.

For the uninitiated, picture the following: before kickoff at each home game, the Scott Stadium crowd turns their attention to the enormous "HooVision" screen for the adventures of CavMan, a fully three-dimensional character based upon the signature Cavalier mascot. Depending on the opponent, CavMan vanquishes a different foe before mounting up for a virtual gallop down the streets of Charlottesville and through the stadium tunnel, timed to coincide with the appearance of the actual mascot and horse charging onto the field. The crowd goes wild, the team is fired up, and the stage is set for a spectacular afternoon of football in Central Virginia.

But like so many other things in Elvgren's world, the CavMan sequences have evolved dramatically.

Animating the Mascot
"Our fans have come to expect a different CavMan for every [game]," Elvgren explained, so gone are the hand-keyframed sequences done against static photographic plates in Hash Animation:Master.

New CavMan adventures take place in a fully 3D "battledome," with CavMan and his foes modeled in NewTek LightWave 3D and animated in Autodesk MotionBuilder, using motion capture performances given from UVA students. "This year we're switching up and getting rid of the ride [to the stadium]," said Elvgren. "We're shortening it up a bit and making the battle a little more intense. We're doing it all 100 percent CG. It gives us an opportunity to be much darker with our lighting, much more dramatic. It also gives us the advantage of being able to do really fun camera moves."

And it's not just the look of the CavMan adventures, but also the volume that has changed. CavMan segments have more than doubled from six (the usual number of home football dates) to 14 for this school year alone, counting the sequences created for selected home basketball dates as well.

Visualizing the Facility
The evolution of CavMan in a very short amount of time is but a microcosm of what has happened over the last few years for Elvgren and the folks at AVS, and the catalyst for much of the change arrived in the form of the construction of UVA's new crown jewel: the $129.8 million John Paul Jones Arena. Completed in 2006, the 15,219-seat JPJ (as it is already affectionately known) has been the talk of the town, home to not only UVA's men's and women's basketball squads, but also host to an eclectic group of national acts that range from The Red Hot Chili Peppers to Disney on Ice.